about the fall semester as a return to what we’ve known—with extra emphasis on the feel-good. “Everyone’s getting to come back to what they recognize as ‘school’—and the events that are traditional and important will happen again,” says Ridgedale Elementary Principal Sheri Petitte. “We’re going to make it a normal school year—using lockers again, switching classes like we normally do,” Cottrell says of Clay-Battelle. “And there has to be time for the fun stuff—like student council elections. We have to have a homecoming. We have to have athletics.” Still, as much as everyone craves normalcy, it’s going to be an adjustment, Mon County Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell says. “That’s just a fact.” That’s based, in part, on the numbers. When families had the choice of sending students back into the classroom in March, around 70 percent went back countywide—more in the elementary grades, fewer at the more independent middle and high school levels. That means about 30 percent finished the year as remote learners. A lot of them haven’t seen the inside of a school for 17 months. Even the ones who did finish last year out in person haven’t experienced the full hurlyburly again yet. It’s also based on the experience with the students who did return in March. After a year on their own, some struggled. “When you are at home, you can eat when you want, go to the bathroom without getting permission to leave the room, work at your own pace,” Petitte observes, reflecting on her students’ return to Ridgedale. Many just found it tiring. “Socially, it can be overwhelming to join a group of 25 when you are used to being a class of one.” So, countywide, teachers and staff are going in with the expectation that “normal” is going to be a little weird for a while, and that some students will be challenged by all the structure and stimulation. “We’ve done a lot of work this year, both with our administrators and our teachers, in preparation for this,” Superintendent Campbell says. “We’ve been preparing our staff for it with professional development around the idea of social and emotional learning.” Social and emotional learning guides students toward self-awareness, empathy, and other tools for personal resilience and social harmony. The school system is also adding counselors. Every school will have a minimum of two school counselors this fall, Campbell says. catching kids up It became clear in December, a few months into the 2020–21 school year, that the remote-then-hybrid-then-remote-again regime had lost some kids along the way. “When you see traditionally good students falling by the wayside, that sets off red flags,” Campbell says. “The teachers needed to re-engage these kids—reach out to them and their families, in multiple ways if necessary, figure out why they weren’t logging in and turning in assignments, and find ways to make those things work.” The redoubled individual efforts teachers made re-engaged a lot of students and set a better tone for the rest of the school year, he says. In part because of that, the year-end results are probably better than our worst fears. “When we were going back into the classroom, in March, I was thinking it was really going to be bad,” says Cheat Lake Elementary second grade teacher Debbie Wise. “Surprisingly, the iReady scores”—that’s an online instruction and assessment tool for reading
bridging gaps Teaching online last year, teachers literally had windows into their students’ home environments. It reminded Cheat Lake Elementary second grade teacher Debbie Wise of the home visits elementary teachers started school years off with in Pittsburgh, earlier in her career. “That told you so much about a student,” Wise says. “From that, you know if Susie comes to school and she’s not feeling well, that’s probably because where they live they’re not getting breakfast or Daddy is very loud or Mommy is not in the picture. Those things shape those children. It’s not a cookie-cutter classroom—knowing those things has a lot to do with how you teach them.” The pandemic aggravated those kinds of family stressors, and teachers across the county say last year’s live online interactions helped them know when a student needed extra support or flexibility. Monongalia County also started the COVID school year with its largest-ever team of outreach facilitators—social workers by training, hired into positions the system has increased from three in 2018 to six last year and nine in the fall of 2020. “Their big role is eliminating the barriers that are in the way of students being successful in school,” says Michael Ryan, coordinator of student supports for Monongalia County Schools. Outreach facilitators made sure families had the information their kids needed to log in for remote learning and helped them find a school-provided internet connection if they didn’t have internet at home. When a student would stop engaging and no one at home answered a teacher’s emails or phone calls, outreach facilitators stepped in. “They could find families that no one else could find, because they’ve built those relationships,” Ryan says. They solved much harder problems, too. “They worked hours before and after their work days, delivering food, setting families up with resources,” Ryan says. They connected families with counseling, food pantries, and the free store and emergency financial assistance at Christian Help. In at least one instance, they got a struggling family into stable housing. “That is money well spent,” Clay-Battelle Principal David Cottrell says of the outreach facilitator program. Ryan agrees. “I think last school year really highlighted what the outreach facilitators can do for our school system and how vital and important they are.” Every Mon County school has at least a part-time outreach facilitator. This fall, the addition of one more makes 10 countywide.
40 MORGANTOWN FALL 2021
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